Captain Mason stood motionless.
“What shall we do?” I impatiently cried.
Christopher left us and rapidly roused the sleepers. He must have dropped reassuring words, for the stir proceeded without panic, though all could see the advancing threat, which approached with an ominous deliberation.
“Do you think it’s to be a slaughter, Captain?” I asked.
He gave no answer, being evidently stunned. I turned to Christopher as he rejoined us. Many a time since I had rescued him from a mob of boys in a Boston street, taken him to my lodgings, and made him my servant, his strange mind had seemed able to penetrate baffling obscurities. At such times he had a way of listening, as though to voices which he alone could hear; but with that was an extraordinary reticence of tongue, and often an indirection that had tried my patience until I learned to understand him as well as an ordinary mortal could.
“Are they going to kill us, Christopher?” I asked.
He was in a deep abstraction, and I knew he was listening. “Sir?”
That was his usual way of gaining time, and I had learned to wait.
“Are they going to kill us?”
“Kill us, sir?”